


First Meeting Commander Adama

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Caprica (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Background Femslash, Canon - TV, Canon Het Relationship, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, What-If, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-09
Updated: 2010-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:19:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saul Tigh first meets Colonel Tamara Adama in a bar, a gun in her hand. It's not the only time she makes an impact on a first meeting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Meeting Commander Adama

Sam Adama first meets Tamara a year after she’s born, after a long journey he never meant to have. She’s a scrap of life toddling around Joseph’s house, dark hair flying about her face. Her cautious eyes regard him and she stares at his tattoos for a long time, but eventually she plops herself on his lap and uses him as a chair for the rest of the evening. Sam grins and fluffs her hair, and she gives him a look but doesn’t protest, especially when he uses his foolproof kid-charmer eyes.

She tries to hide it, but Sam can feel a kindred spirit buried in Tamara. Neither she nor Joseph will let him tease it out of her, but he doesn’t need to. She’ll grow up to do great things, he knows.

Willie, when he comes along a few years later, is much more his father’s son. He likes to antagonize Sam at first, and Sam responds, taking a perverse pleasure in rebuking the parts of his brother that are ingrained in Willie. If uncles have any influence at all, Willie won’t grow up to be like his father.

But Willie doesn’t grow up at all. The family falls apart when he’s killed in the famous maglev train accident along with his mother.

All Joseph’s flaws come to the forefront, and he drives Tamara away with his mood swings. She’s on the cusp of adulthood, vulnerable, and nothing’s easy but she’s a fighter. Sam takes her under his wing and unlike her father he doesn’t pretend that grief rules everything in their lives.

For a while she has him convinced that her rebellion goes all the way towards joining Sam, and one time over a card table, just the two of them, he suggests that she get the same cultural tattoos he has.

She glances up and then down, and unlike before the family tragedy her hair is pulled back so it doesn’t mask her face—which is calm. “They don’t like tattoos in the Fleet.”

Sam jerks himself upright. “The Fleet?” From one set of law to the other, judicial to martial...maybe she’s more like his brother than he realized.

“Father will hate it,” Tamara explains, and places her bet in the center of the table.

“So will I,” Sam snorts out.

Her eyes glance up at his over her cards. “I know.”

Sam stares at her for a second, then flashes his teeth in a broad grin. Hate the Fleet, yes, but frak, he could never hate someone with her guts.

***

Saul Tigh first meets Tamara Adama at a barfight. The war’s over, in his weak moments he regrets leaving Ellen, and the other man was sure as hell asking for it. He throws in a few good shots before they gang up on him, and though he growls and prepares to take it all on, there’s a part of him that’s cursing himself for what he’s become.

A weapon cocks behind his head. Everyone stops. Saul turns around to see a woman there, dark eyes glittering out of a hard face as she holds the rifle securely in her arms. She holds herself in a sheet-rock pose that Saul recognizes too well.

“Is there a _problem_?” she grates out of a clenched jaw. “Or do I need to clean out this place yet again?”

The two men holding Saul’s arms drop them, and with a mumble they back off.

Saul grumbles under his breath at nothing in particular as he shakes his hand, knuckles a little sore.

“You’re an insane one,” the woman says, sitting down at the bar with a long exhale.

Saul cocks an eyebrow and pointedly stares at the gun that still hangs from the crook of her elbow.

There’s a pause. “I guess the war stole a little of all our sanities,” the woman says with a quirk of her lip. She offers her hand. “Adama, Tamara. Formerly of the Colonial Fleet.”

Saul shakes it firmly. “Tigh, Saul. Ditto. And frak it all, I wish I was back there.”

Tamara sighs. “My wife would hate me for saying this, but I know what you mean. I love her, and our kids, but...”

“You don’t just leave,” Saul says under his breath. He grimaces as he thinks of Ellen and how she understood so much and yet not _that_.

Tamara’s eyebrows rise and fall briefly. “It’s not like it’s not there, though, if someday we...”

Saul hums under his breath but doesn’t answer.

“What ship are you serving on now?” she asks next.

Saul’s not disappointed when it turns out to be the same one she’s on. She has a solid way of looking at the world, and Saul finds that it adds gravity to his world, and he stops wobbling a little. And when Tamara invites him home to meet Carolanne and their little boys, she reminds him of the other focal point of his life.

“Sometimes we were just plain miserable,” Saul protests, after the story of Ellen and their divorce comes tumbling out. He downs back a little more ambrosia.

“You’re miserable now,” Tamara says with a dry laugh, arm wrapped around Carolanne. “You should find her again, idiot, have those times with her as well as the good ones.”

“Tam!” Carolanne slaps her on the arm.

“It’s true,” Tamara says.

“It is,” Saul mumbles.

“Make sure you invite me to the wedding,” Tamara says with a half-grin.

Saul gives her an eye, but the next day he looks up Ellen’s number, takes a breath, and makes the call. He’s back here, and for all her chaos, Ellen starts bringing everything into balance again. Her and Tamara, they hold his universe in place.

***

Lee first meets his other mother—Mama, not Mummy who he’s always known—when he’s six years old. She’s been on campaign for only two years, but Lee doesn’t remember before that. Zak can’t, of course.

Mummy’s been upset for weeks, grumbling or drinking or crying or all of the above. Sometimes she stares at pictures until she bursts into tears. Sometimes she throws something, and when Zak cries she hugs him so tight that he cries more, until they’re both crying but Mummy’s tears are angry ones. Sometimes the bottle gets slowly emptier but Mummy doesn’t move for hours.

But finally Mummy wakes them up early in the morning, her golden hair curled for once, and gets him and Zak into mostly-clean clothes. “Mama’s coming home?” Zak asks hopefully.

“She’d better,” Mummy says with a tone that tries to be sharp.

Zak sits on the porch and swings his legs, pulling at the flowers that Mummy half-heartedly plants every spring. Lee walks in the grass, watching the flies buzz around his ankles, and if he doesn’t listen to Mummy’s random chiding of Zak, the world is good.

“Mama!”

Lee turns around to see Zak barreling down the driveway on his short legs. A tall woman stands at the end, strong frame accented by the dark blue angles of a military uniform that Lee has seen on others before. Her dark hair is pulled back from a clean-lined face, and Lee’s child’s heart is hesitant for a second.

But Zak runs into Mama’s legs and hugs her, and Mama bends with a smile to scoop him up and walk forward. “Hey you,” she says in a warm voice, settling Zak on her hip with a kiss to his forehead.

Lee walks hesitantly to the sidewalk, and stands still until Mama walks up.

“Doing good, blue-eyes?” Mama asks him, her smile strong and not masking like Mummy’s.

“Yeah,” Lee mumbles, flustered. Zak has his arms tight around Mama, but Lee’s a big boy and he can’t hug her unless she does it first.

Mummy laughs then, a little awkwardly, but Mama pulls her in for a big strong hug, and Mummy’s smile stops being sad for a little as she clings to Mama. Lee never thought of Mama as Colonel Adama before today, even though Mummy never really stopped talking in bitter tones about ships that tore their family apart. But Mama’s a big strong soldier, and she’s come back to make things right, lead them all to a better place.

He tags along as they go into the house, Mama and Mummy laughing about things that Lee doesn’t understand. But he hopes Mama stays home for a long time this time, so he doesn’t forget her.

***

Ellen first meets the infamous Commander Adama a year before she marries Saul again, despite his failure to stick in more successful civilian enterprises. He’s in the Fleet for more than just a need to fight now, she realizes, and despite having been told over and over that Tamara is a family woman, Ellen isn’t ashamed of being slightly suspicious.

When the door opens and a dark haired woman stands there, older than Ellen but wearing the age well, Ellen isn’t expecting a welcome hug. She doesn't get it, but she isn’t expecting a soft handshake and a warm smile either, and that’s what Tamara gives, with a, “Ellen, right?”

“The one and only,” Ellen answers, collecting her composure.

“Saul’s brought you up so often, sometimes I forgot we’d never actually met,” Tamara says, waving to them to come in with a wide gesture.

“Same here,” Ellen says coolly, smiling as she looks around the Adamas’ house. It looks like it’s been threatened with cleaning materials more than once, but has withstood the interrogation. Ellen isn’t really surprised, and after seeing Carolanne she wouldn’t suspect anything less.

The evening is lively, and Tamara’s two teenage sons, though adopted through a family tragedy, seem to have inherited her expressions as well as their other mother’s charms. Ellen marks Carolanne as more than a little manipulative, but not on purpose—clearly not worth Ellen’s time.

She watches Tamara with her Saul, the way Saul laughs when Tamara makes a dry remark, the way Tamara doesn’t beat around the bush. She tries to engage Ellen in conversation, but Ellen’s here to observe tonight. She sips at the champagne and watches this life that she’s interfering in now.

She wishes it was more like her suspicions. If there’s any drama at all, it’s in the Adamas’ household alone. Funny how Saul never mentioned that they weren’t exactly blissful, however happy. But seeing him and Tamara together, the easy way they talk, the shared background...it’s nothing like the way Saul looks at her, or Tamara looks at Carolanne. Ellen knows all kinds of looks, and it isn’t that.

Her words join in the conversation then, her laugh freely let loose. Never say that Ellen doesn’t know how to be carefree and secure.

Tamara comes into the kitchen a minute after Ellen retires there for a drink. She has an intense look on her face, a soft light in her eyes. Ellen smiles at her, tipping her head.

“I can see why he married you,” Tamara opens, glancing straight at Ellen.

Ellen raises her eyebrows slowly, using her eyes to full effect.

Tamara glances back. “I can also see why you both decided to divorce each other. Nothing’s all that subtle with you two, is it?”

Ellen has nothing to answer with but the truth. “No, that was never one of our flaws.”

Tamara gives a small smile that crinkles the corners of her mouth. “Maybe you should chew on the fact that you’ve lasted so many years without each other, and yet you’ve never forgotten.”

“Oh, Saul and I don’t do well with _married_ ,” Ellen says, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

“You aren’t doing so well with divorce either,” Tamara says with a hard look. “Maybe you need to try a different standard for ‘well’, if you’re going to truly be it. If you’re not ready to be miserably happy with Saul, then no one is. I know he’s ready for that with you.”

“You’re not frakking with me, are you? Commander Adama?” Ellen keeps her tone light, gaze tight.

“I don’t know, what do you think?” Tamara answers, with a cock of her head almost like Ellen’s. Her eyes narrow a moment, but Ellen thinks it might be amusement. Tamara walks off, and there may be no swing in her hips, but it’s a satisfied walk.

Ellen’s hesitant to accept advice from someone who may not have what they’re selling, but truthfully, she’d suspect Tamara more if she looked perfect. Chewing on the inside of her lip, Ellen gives the Commander a long thought before going back into the room. Something stirs in her every time she sees Saul, and his eyes always light just a little, even if he doesn’t look up and smile whenever she walks in the room. They’re always two steps away from throwing things, but Ellen thinks Tamara’s opinion might not be all wrong.

Tamara embraces them both goodbye, and for the first time in her life Ellen doesn’t know exactly what she’ll do next.

***

Kara first meets Zak’s military mother under the worst possible circumstances. Zak hadn’t been quiet about them. “Mum’s a bit soft, y’know? Nice, but tough to deal with. Mom’s just tough all over.”

“Did she push you to this?” Kara had asked, smiling at him, fingers tangled with his.

“Not really...” Zak had said, slowly. “But—my brother, Lee, he always said she expected it of us, and it drove him nuts. I don’t know, I didn’t see it.”

Kara hadn’t known what to think, other than the fact that despite his lack of talent, she would be glad if Zak’s mother had pushed him unconsciously towards flight.

She changed her mind when he died and it might as well have been by Kara’s hand, and Kara meets Commander Tamara Adama at the base three days later.

She’s a worn woman, and it isn’t just from grief. But she wears the age as if it’s better than youth, and her dark eyes look straight at the world. And at Kara. Kara has to swallow hard and set her jaw.

“You’re Lieutenant Thrace?” the Commander asks, stepping up, slightly taller than her but feeling like a tower to Kara.

“Yes, sir,” Kara says, saluting with a hand that doesn’t shake now.

Tamara nods, and of all the words that Kara can say, none of them feel like they would be just right. She doesn’t have to say any of them.

“You were Zak’s.” Tamara Adama’s eyes aren’t soft, but it doesn’t hurt when Kara looks up at them and sees the double meaning clearly there.

“Yes,” is all Kara can say. She hopes with all her heart that the Commander can’t read just how necessary the guilt is.

Tamara Adama offers her hand then, and Kara shakes it, and the other woman says quietly, “I can see that he was in good hands.”

 “Not good enough,” Kara answers before she can think, a choke in her throat.

“We can’t ever know that,” the Commander says, gaze narrowing. “More importantly, you can’t.”

Kara doesn’t quite understand, but Tamara’s still holding her hand tightly.

“You should be at the funeral this weekend,” the woman says, eyes pooling with deep-set feeling at last. “But not like that. If you were what my son thought you were, you won’t be like that when you come.”

There’s no ‘please’, no request, just a squeeze of Kara’s hand before the Commander walks away. Yet it’s what Kara wants. It’s the sharpness, the need alone, without hesitance. It’s security in the way that the decision’s already been made.

She manages to get through the funeral without killing herself with guilt and that’s enough. She stands at Tamara’s side when the guns sound their salute and her heart breaks and her eyes are blurred with tears, but it’s just grief. Lee stands with Zak’s other mother, shattered and weeping, but Tamara’s with Kara and her grief is somehow more tangible.

Kara almost turns down the dinner invitation a week later, to come up to Commander Adama’s post on the Battlestar Galactica. She can’t confess her guilty secret, but she won’t take advantage of the secrecy either. But you don’t circle the subject with Tamara, and you don’t say no without a good reason. The only reason Kara has is one she’s not ready to share, and so she goes up there as requested.

Meeting Commander Adama’s eyes is something that becomes easier over the course of the meal as Kara realizes with bitter relief that Tamara isn’t looking for anything that’s not on the surface. She’s not digging for information, for a relationship, for anything but the knowledge and sympathy that she and Kara can share openly.

Tamara even gives her a smile along with her handshake when they say farewell.

Two months later, when Kara can hardly breathe every time she steps in the Academy, Tamara Adama sends her a message that says there’s a place open on the _Galactica_ for a pilot. Kara’s core is iron-hard with bitterness now, but she accepts it. This will be new and fresh and hopefully an escape.

“It’s not out of sympathy,” Tamara warns her, even as she greets Kara with a kind look. “I know you’re good, or I wouldn’t have brought you on.”

“Thank you,” Kara answers with a straight look and a smile.

It’s the beginning of a new life, the beginning of Starbuck.

***

Boomer first meets Commander Adama of the _Galactica_ late into her first day. Colonel Tigh had been the one to orientate her with a sharp tongue and a growl to go with every instruction. She misses her first landing, and Adama is there on the hangar deck to meet her. Boomer’s throat chokes in on itself with stress

“Nervous?” Tamara raises an eyebrow, standing neatly.

“Yes sir,” Boomer manages, with only a slight stammer in the middle.

“You should be, it’s your first day,” says the Commander, even as she stretches out a hand. “But you’re not dead yet, or dismissed, so don’t take it too far.”

“I’m—trying not to, sir,” Boomer says, blinking with surprise even as she shakes the Commander’s hand back.

“Doing is better than trying,” Tamara Adama says, looking Boomer directly in the eye. “And it’s what I want to hear about. Chief Tyrol, have Valerii run that route again. I want to see what she looks like when she’s not nervous.” And with a smooth nod to Boomer, she stands there, expecting success as if expectation will bring it about.

Boomer clenches her hands as she salutes and steps back into the Raptor. The tension ripples through her and then is gone, just gone. Of course she can do this. Why else would she have made it this far?

She flies the route again and only barely stumbles with the landing.

“Trying, I see,” Tamara says, but her tone is easy.

“I’ll do it, sir,” Boomer says, and it’s a promise that’s not desperate as she looks her commander in the eye.

“I know it,” Tamara says with almost a quirk of a smile.

The Commander walks off, leaving Boomer with Chief. “Does that happen with everyone’s first day?” Boomer asks, half breathless with relief.

“I certainly hope we weren’t the only ones, sir,” Chief Tyrol breathes out with a cocked eyebrow.

Boomer nods, slowly. She has a feeling that Tamara doesn’t pick special ones, either good or bad—or at least when she does, it’s never a desirable thing. And somehow, that makes her first night almost comfortable.

***

Lee hasn’t seen Tamara in years now. Not since Zak’s death. Carolanne he’s seen once, but it made him too bitter and he left. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he also visited his other mother without her asking for it first—so he didn’t.

She never asked. Now her ship is being decommissioned, and Lee has been called in with the reserves.

“Lee,” she says, when he’s directed to her quarters.

“Mom,” he answers, and standing there in her presence he doesn’t know what he feels. He was so sure that she’d put Zak up in that Viper, somehow, with her silence instead of her words. But when she turns to him, meets his eye, he can’t believe it. He’s not sure if she’s _ever_ had an unconscious goal, and as much as it frustrates him he can’t hate her.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Tamara says after a pause.

“Yeah, two years,” Lee says, mouth twisting as he watches the lack of impact. She hadn’t pushed Zak, so he can’t be upset about that, but she never pushed him to have a closer relationship—that, he can let gnaw at him, let eat at his heart. That she didn’t seem to want him to want her.

She ruins it with three words. “I was waiting.”

Damn, _frak_. “Really?” he manages to be skeptical.

“I was hoping you hadn’t disowned me,” Tamara says, taking a step closer to him, her eyes softer than he’s seen since he was a little boy sitting on her lap. She gives a slight shrug, too, and it feels so honest that Lee’s heart is a twisted mess of conflict.

“I thought it was the other way around.”

“Not at all, Lee,” she says in a voice meant only for him, each word more solid than the ship they’re in.

Damn him, he doesn’t know what to do but stare at her, realizing that he’d been expecting a mind game and had misread the truth he’d received instead. Two years, and they’re at the same place they were when it started, when he’d left the after-funeral with grief and a bitterness just starting to sprout.

Finally he says, “So we both made mistakes, then,” and hates how it sounds slightly pathetic in his voice.

“Nothing new there,” she answers.

He can’t smile, but when she makes the first move and offers her hand, he steps in closer and gives it with half an embrace. She’s still the same mother he knew: not always there, but ready to be.

“Glad to see you safely on my ship,” she says after a moment.

“Glad to be here,” Lee says, and mostly means it. He didn’t think he would.

***

Laura Roslin first meets Tamara Adama on the day that the worlds are destroyed. She doesn’t take much notice from the first part of that meeting, walking through the ships in supposed peace as she discusses education policy for the museum that this ship is to become.

“I don’t know why they sent you,” the Commander tells her as they walk down the corridors. “The decision’s final. It has been for over three decades. No networked computers.”

Laura frowns and takes a moment to prepare her response.

But Tamara turns with a sharp look. “I’m not afraid of computers, if that’s what you’re going to say. I’m not paranoid that the Cylons are just waiting for a networked system so that they can attack. But no matter what you say, I’ve thought through all the options, and my decision still stands.”

Laura bristles and gives Commander Adama a long answering stare. She should have been expecting something this blunt from a military woman, but after years of seeing only the higher-ups near cabinet positions, she’s forgotten what words sound like when not framed in politics. “Then what exactly is this meeting for, Commander?” she answers, her tone coolly curious without giving in yet.

“For you to discover that your persuasion will not affect me, so we don’t end up in a pointless circular argument.” Tamara gives a professional but not provoking smile. “Madame Secretary.”

Laura is peeved, but her sense of strategy sets in, and she doesn’t make a move until after the decommissioning ceremony because anything sooner would turn into exactly what Tamara predicted.

As it turns out, so does Laura’s strategy, and halfway through a pointless circular argument Tamara cuts it off with a flat statement. Laura can’t quite resent her for it, even as she gets back on Colonial 798 with Billy, having lost the battle.

But then they all lose the war, as they listen to the radio transmission in horror.

After messages and hopes and prayers prove in vain, Laura raises her right hand and repeats the words that make her the new President. And then she’s fighting for humanity, her ship is now Colonial One, and everything’s new.

When she gets back to the _Galactica_ , it’s like their first meeting never happened because this is the one that matters. Tamara has a straight-backed way of standing that would intimidate Laura if the costs weren’t so high. She’s had time to catch her breath and her thoughts, knows what she’s going to do here.

“Are you planning to stage a military coup?” Laura asks once the two of them are alone.

“No,” Tamara says, arms crossed, chin tucked as she looks down at Laura.

“Good,” Laura says. “Because I’ve gathered the fifty-thousand remaining survivors of humanity, and as the President I’m going to need the military on my side to keep them safe.”

“The military’s not here to keep you safe anymore,” Tamara says, staring at Laura.

She raises her eyebrows at the still-standing Commander until she responds with a short statement:

“We’re going to war in this battlestar.”

“There is no war,” Laura answers. “We lost.”

“Then we’ll start a new one,” Tamara answers, eyes glittering with determination.

“To lose again? You have only one battlestar, Commander. One.” She expects a protest, a fight, a damned sense of honor and revenge.

She wasn’t paying attention before, but when Tamara doesn’t give that kind of response, it’s only a surprise for a second. The Commander’s eyes are plain—survival is higher than war if war will not bring survival. Her sharp look at Laura is demanding. “You don’t have another plan, do you?”

Laura meets it. “I do. We run, we escape, and we start having children.”

“That’s insane.”

“More than a suicide mission? Explain how, won’t you?” Laura doesn’t break her gaze from Tamara, and she can tell that the woman isn’t bound to a plan yet. She’s too careful for that, especially now with the weight of her insignia and the old ship and its unprepared crew clearly resting on her shoulders. Laura’s ready to poke at all her doubts until she’s ready to compromise.

Which is now, it seems, as Tamara deliberately takes a seat and folds her arms more loosely. “Make your plan less insane, or suicide’s all we’ll have time for before we’re all dead.”

Laura takes a deep breath and begins. Their little scrap of humanity is going to survive if they have anything to do with it.


End file.
